Video: not all correct... - Part 1

THIS ESSAY is a sliver of notes regarding the phenomena of video and new media art, the visual culture and technology that serve as the basis for these phenomena, and also about the OK. Video – Jakarta Video Art Festival 2003.



I.

Two years ago, the great guru of new media art, Lev Manovich, published The Language of New Media (MIT Press, 2001). It has a blue cover, with a picture of a roll of film. The book’s first chapter opens with scenes from Man with a Movie Camera, and it closes with a chapter entitled “What Is Cinema?” To Lev, films play a central role in the effort to understand the new media art. He jokingly says that he had even meant to give the following subtitle to the book: “Everything you want to know about new media but afraid of asking it to Dziga Vertov”.

To understand videos, we inevitably must return to the history of films—not only because videos are one form of the technological progress of films, but also because it is in films that the Western art obsession for the reality finds its apogee. While the Eastern art is characterized by its decorative nature and its flatness, all Western art efforts—supported as they have been by the Western science—are devoted to capture the reality (which for such a long time has been identified with ‘precise imitation’). During the Renaissance, Vesalius dissections lay the foundation for the illustrations of human anatomy; Alberti’s trellised window divided painting models and painting planes into structured squares; while Giotto, the great Italian painter, had been dubbed “the first man who managed to create three-dimensional forms on a flat surface… It was the first time since antiquity that a painter could truly overcome the massive shape.”[1]

When photography had been invented, many said that the art of painting was dead: one could reproduce precise imitations with the help of an apparatus! Clive Bell, however, begged to differ: “…if a representative form has a value, then the value lies in its form, not in its representation.”[2] For Bell, the presence of photography precisely purifies painting, liberating it from its chronic concerns about descriptions and representations, and therefore re-focuses its concerns toward the “essence”—no longer the essence of things, but the visual essence instead. With the “representational crisis”, painting’s interest in precise imitation faded, but its interest in reality did not. It merely turned its head toward another reality: the reality of nature as continuous changes of light and movements (Impressionism), the reality of emotion (Expressionism), the reality of dream and sub-consciousness (Surrealism), and so forth.

Meanwhile, due to technological limitations, the early works of photography had not shown any significant difference from classical paintings. The objects of the photographs were limited to those of still life, landscape, or static models. The lack of light-sensitivity of films in the early period, which required an interval of approximately three minutes to adsorb light and create a negative image, had not enabled photography to capture dynamic motions. It was only later, along with the progress of the technology, that photography obtained its true nature in the hands of the journalists. By capturing big events directly at the source—as well as trivial and candid daily events that paintings had not managed to capture—journalism put photography in a distinct position. Reality had been snatched away from painting and brought closer to photography. What was captured on the canvass might be true, or it might be false—but what was captured on the photograph must have been true. Journalists will continue to uphold such respect for the photographic reality.[3]

The obsession in reality is seen as having reached its apex when cameras and film projectors were invented. In a discussion in Moscow in 1970s, the director Andrei Tarkovsky was asked whether he would be interested to make an abstract film. He replied: There is no such thing as an abstract film. Cinema’s fundamental work has been to open the camera’s shutter and let the film roll, recording whatever is taking place in front of the lens. Indeed, when we see the works of the film pioneers, it is apparent that the will to record was greater than the will to narrate. Cinema, in the beginning, is about the camera, not about the plot. One extreme form of such stand is apparent in the character and work of the revolutionary Russian director, Dziga Vertov (1896 – 1954), the writer of the brilliant manifesto about the omnificence of the camera. His series, Kino-Pravda (Film Truth), recorded daily lives at the market, the bar, the school, sometimes with a hidden camera. He then arranged the frames in order to capture a deeper truth than what was seen by the naked eyes. His obsession with reality went hand-in-hand with his indifference about “beauty” and “art”. In his hands, the camera became “the mechanic eyes”. In 1923, he wrote:

“I am the eye. The mechanical eye. I, the machine, show you a world in a way only I can see. I liberate myself from human’s immobility, today and forever. I am constantly on the move. I approach objects and depart from them. I crawl under them. I move aside a cantering horse. I fall and rise along with the falling and rising bodies. It is I, the machine, maneuvering in chaotic movements, recording one action upon another in the most delicate combination.”[4]

The camera’s mobility would then satiate what Walter Benjamin called “the contemporary mass desire to bring objects ‘closer by’, spatially and personally.”[5] Benjamin, we know, was a writer who consistently tackled the early problems of modernism. His most-quoted essay, “Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936), left an extensive trace for anyone who wished to analyze the problem of aesthetic changes in relation with the mechanization of modern lives. The originality of his ideas is still relevant if we wish to understand the relationship between art and technology in today’s digital age: how the intervention of technology changes the nature of representations, the patterns of communication, and artistic practices.

Benjamin’s main idea revolves around what he calls the “aura”: a kind of force (influence) emanating from an artwork, historical object, or natural object. In the Middle Ages, peasants kneeled down on the side of the road when a procession of religious paintings was taking place. For them, those were not mere paintings, but rather living embodiments of the Holy Family. Then came the print technology; the paintings could be reproduced and pasted on the wall, their mystical quality faded, and their aura vanished accordingly.

We might think that one must be close to a work of art to be able to experience its aura, or that the aura vanishes because the industry has snatched the artwork further away from us. To Benjamin, however, it is precisely the other way round: it is this closeness that weakens the aura, as the aura is a “distinct phenomenon of distance”. This is true not only in art; distance is also important even in the daily life. “If, lying down in one summer afternoon, you gaze upon the mountaintops on the horizon, or upon the tips of the branches that have covered you with their shadows, you are experiencing the aura of the mountain, the aura of the branch.”

The advance of the visual technology turns all this upside down. It is not only the artwork that can be reproduced, but also tree branches, mountains—any object can be “infiltrated”. The cameraman—whom Benjamin likens with a surgeon—“penetrates deep down into the network [of reality]”.

With its mobility, the camera can be everywhere to capture objects from up close (including underneath a moving train, as Vertov has mentioned). Although his writing sounds gloomy, Benjamin was in fact warmly welcoming the situation which he called “the universal equality of objects”. He believed that the presence of visual technology would bring about democracy in the production and distribution of art works.

Along with the progress of film from being an experiment in art/technology to becoming the base of an entertainment industry, the role of the camera reaches its plateau while the narrative aspect becomes important.[6] The inventions of video camera and player presented a challenge toward films not merely in terms of the technology and economic sides, but also in the way of seeing. Video cameras are often used in television journalism for reportage. From the 1970s, a significant shift was taking place in American TV programs: the portion given for news eventually became bigger than that given for films. It was not a coincidence that the Hollywood film industry at the time had also started to use a lot of special effects with the help of sophisticated technology, in order to create an illusion of reality. The obsession for reality is now fulfilled in two opposing ways. In Hollywood, this is done with film manipulations, with themes that lie mostly in the realm of fantasy: outer space or stone age, aliens or dinosaurs, Star Wars or Jurassic Park. Meanwhile, in television, “the desire to bring objects ‘closer by’, spatially and personally” is fulfilled precisely without manipulations. Live reportage by journalists in the Iraqi war fronts, in Aceh, or in police raids tries to bring viewers to the “purest” reality, which is therefore the “truest” reality as well.[7] This is also the goal of the recently-popular reality shows, or of programs such as “Top Ten Most Dangerous Police Video” and unfunny candid camera pranks. Taking cue from Fat Boy Slim’s music clip, several Indonesian musicians today have also employed the technique of using hidden cameras.

Lately, the boundary between the two possibilities has become increasingly blurred. BBC uses super-sophisticated animation techniques to produce Walking with Dinosaurs, a series that is difficult to be called fiction but also hard to be classified as documentary. Meanwhile, the film Blair Witch Project and the cinematic achievements of the Dogma group have shaken Hollywoodian belief in the role of a film’s special effect in determining its success. Meanwhile, in the realm of video art, although the curator of the OK. Video today has set out a definition regarding the true nature of video—the existence of a recording activity and simple editing techniques, having a candid nature, and is ‘lacking in designs’—this is not especially true for the work by Petra Vargova who used sophisticated video game animations. At the same time, fascinating works by the Argentinean video artists, Sebastian Diaz Morales, show a strong tendency toward the return to narration in video art—in other words, the works have been amply designed (probably this is the reason why they have not been selected for today’s festival). In Germany, the Hybride Formen movement brings new horizons for documentary films in their view of the reality.

Nobody can predict future possibilities that might result from such blurring of boundaries between art, film, video, and others. One thing is clear, however: “the collaboration of art and technology”—borrowing a phrase from the catalogue of OK. Video—is no longer a mere theoretical possibility.



II.

It is actually strange how some people are still flabbergasted as they view the latest development of art such as the ones we are seeing today; and it is especially strange if some of those people are from within the art circle. Some of them would make comments that are not only passé but also—pardon me—foolish: “This isn’t art”, or, worse still, “What is video art? Even sellers of electronic gadgets in Glodok can do better.” As for myself, I do not wholly understand (or like) works of video art that we are seeing at the Festival today. However, the flood of works sent to ruangrupa clearly shows that the video art phenomenon is real and undeniable. The question should rather be: Why are we surprised to see the linkage between art and technology as if it is a recent phenomenon? Have art and technology not been progressing dialectically together, during their long history in Europe? Has it not been said that the word ‘seni’—Indonesian for ‘art’—originated from the word ‘techne’, the Greek word that forms the root for the word ‘technology’?

But, what can we do, in this country the gap between the modern art and modern technology—being adopted products of European origins—cannot be bridged. European grand ideas entered the Dutch Indies as ideas without their material base; while products of European technology arrived as materials without their ideological histories. On new year’s eve of December 31, 1926, the Dutch Indies already had its own film production, Loetoeng Kasaroeng. The people in the Dutch Indies, however, accepted films without having experienced the gradual development of optical technology as it had progressed in Europe: the Newtonian prism → camera obscura → camera lucida → photography → kinetoscope. On the contrary, later on, visual distortions à la post-impressionism to cubism are employed as styles/genres by some of the pioneers of Indonesian modern art. Such visual distortions had actually been born from the shock felt by the Western artists as they stood face-to-face with the flood of visual experiences that had hit Europe due to the progress in photography, cinema, and the industry in general. The Indonesian artists then adopted such distortions, without their having been culturally exposed to such visual turbulence.

In 1949, Trisno Sumardjo defended the emergence of such adopted modern art with an argument saying that our task “is not to create a Renaissance.”[8] I think he was right (or seeking to find a justification) at least in one thing: it is indeed too late for Indonesia to reach its Renaissance; all forms of knowledge have been found in the world “out there”. “Then we, in all fields and in the shortest possible period, must leap across centuries.” “Hoooplaaa!” Chairil Anwar the poet yelled, “The farthest possible leap...” In other words, adoption is natural, as for Trisno and his friends, “this is just one link in the chain of our progress to become citizens of the world.”

‘Citizens of the world’, ‘legitimate beneficiaries of the world’s culture’—these terms might make us forget that it is not that easy to relocate and re-establish histories. Ideas can be adopted, things can be used, but the history that forms their background does not always go along with them. James Baldwin, the renowned black writer—the color that represented the colonized nations—had long been aware of such bereavements. In Notes of a Native Son, written approximately around the time when Trisno Sumardjo was writing his essay in Indonesia, Baldwin wrote about his white neighbors in a village in Switzerland, where he was staying. “The most illiterate of them would be connected to Dante, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Aeschylus, Da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Racine—something that would never happen to me.” For Baldwin, all those “are not my heritage. At the same time, I have no other heritage that I can use…”[9] Instead of claiming of being “the legitimate beneficiary of the world’s culture”, Baldwin called himself a “bastard of the West”.

If the Indonesian writers of the 1945 Generation were more optimistic than Baldwin had been, that was merely because they represented a different situation altogether. No matter how black Baldwin had been, he was, in any case, a citizen of a country that had expressed its call of freedom, a country that had once in a vicious civil war defended the right of its black citizens. Meanwhile, Indonesia was struggling to stand up, still tottering after being attacked twice by its former colonial power. The argument of “being a citizen of the world” thus had a practical value: We had to prove that we could stand as equals alongside other nations. Soedjojono demanded that art become ‘internationalist’ and the artists, nationalists. I think no one at the time had a clear picture about how art could help liberate a nation, but almost everybody was sure that modernism was the only way toward liberation. The Indonesian art (and any other field) must inevitably become modern because of its anticolonial aspect. Indonesian modernism had not been born from its material basis, neither had it been brought to being from a dialectic process between the history of science, the technological environment, and the industry; instead, it was born out of the determination to be free. Such political justification is considered legitimate in the effort to redeem the discontinuity between the Indonesian culture and its history—not merely its traditional history, but also its European history, to which it always refers back.[10]


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During the New Order, such adopted modernism moved faster and left an increasingly bigger gap. The New Order, we know, had been established with a kind of disgust toward the incessant conflicts of the Old Order. The conflicts were seen as being the result of the “politics as the commander” doctrine. The New Order, therefore, was defined by a process of depoliticization: ideologies were done away with while programs took a center stage. To become equal with other nations, Indonesia must become modern, not in terms of political rhetoric, but in terms of real economy. We could no longer say “go to hell with your aid!” but must instead welcome foreign investments, as much as possible. As we read in chapter 34 of Das Kapital, foreign investments never walks blithely alone. Therein lies the desire of the market expansion, after their own domestic markets have been saturated. From the 1970s onward, foreign consumption products and technology inundated a country whose citizens were mostly illiterate. Modernism strides on, ignoring its essence: rationality.

Without rationality, our political-economic system precisely went backward yet again. The consideration of the public—the main pillar of modern democracy—was replaced with the decision of a handful of technocrats claiming to be highly intelligent and rational. They defined modernism with a deadline: in 2000 we shall “take off”, everything must be accelerated (remember that in 1973, Ali Moertopo wrote the book titled Akselerasi Modernisasi, or The Acceleration of Modernization). But where were we taking off, and could people actually be forced to be modern, faster than they naturally would? The technocrats left such questions unanswered. It was history that would later provide an answer. The country is actually agrarian, but Habibie pushed it to become a force in the avionics industry. It did not take long for the projects of N250 and N2130 aircrafts to grind to a halt, and Habibie’s dream factory took another direction and started churning out pots and pans, before finally declared bankrupt and left its thousands employees jobless.

Today, when the postmodernists harshly criticize the Indonesian modernism, I think they are obliged to analyze what it is that they are actually criticizing: the modernism itself, or the half-hearted and incomplete modernism that has been the result of an adoption? How far has Indonesia become modern, become “Western”, or become rational? Isn’t all the chaos in our lives (in politics, education, sport, transportation, urban design, up to the translation of literary works) has been the result of a lack of rationality? Scientist like Mochtar Pabottinggi never stops reminding us about the importance of political rationality. Isn’t it irrationality instead of modernism that has made consumerism and malls dominant, black magic clauses enter the Code of Criminal Justice, and turned archeological sites inside-out in search of hidden treasures?

With such a wobbly basis, the early development policies of the New Order had been supported—if not salvaged—by the upsurging world’s oil price. In 1974 – 1980, more than half of the government’s income had come from oil. In 1982, government’s oil-based income reached up to 62 per cent. The oil boom brought about an extensive influence in Indonesia in the social and economic realms—and in its art as well.

At that time, there was an art event which I think was as important as the New Art Movement or Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru had been, but was unfortunately largely forgotten. In 1974, the state’s oil company Pertamina asked several renowned Indonesian painters to paint its oil refineries. This was an obvious about-face from “politics as the commander” to “the economy as the commander” in the Indonesian art. Art maecenas are not a new thing in Indonesia, but formerly its basis was the revolution. The government, through the Ministry of Youth Affairs, endowed painters during the era of the Physical Revolution with facilities, subsidies, and equipments. Every painter was to submit three “revolution-type” paintings, each would be valued at Rp700.00. The Ministry also published a collection of print works by Baharudin MS and Mochtar Apin, to commemorate the anniversary of the Indonesian Proclamation. In the 1960s, the government ordered monumental bronze sculptures by Edhi Sunarso (the ‘Welcome’ sculpture at the HI roundabout, Jakarta, and the ‘Liberation of West Irian’). What happened in 1974 was an altogether new thing. The basis was economy, and it was a company that gave the order—it was a state company, but a company nonetheless. There were oppositions, all speaking in a chorus: the artist should be creating without being dictated. In the speech he gave at the Taman Ismail Marzuki cultural park on December 21, 1974, Soedjoko criticized this chorus, providing another consideration for the debate. Similar to the arguments I have outlined above, Soedjoko maintained that the Indonesian artists and culturati were not modern at all, they mostly drew “[the country’s] sky, fields, and seas”, ignoring the essence of oil as “the one universal theme, one modern drama full of tension and fear and victorious roars.” “Having seen the resulting paintings, I am not sure that the painters have been truly shaken by the new topic. Apparently, they viewed this as an opportunity to paint something in the old way, namely the landscape painting. […] No matter how ‘modernized’ our painter has been, he is still awkward in the face of the giants that are the factory and the industry. Why is that? The reasons for that would provide materials for an amusing debate. The apple of our modern painter’s eye has still been the yellowing rice stalks and the ever-popular coconut trees…”[11]

The art Maecenas à la Pertamina did not limit their patronage in this area only; they also put a full-page advertisement in the magazine Budaja Djaja. As a general rule of thumb, it was the oil boom that had played the most significant rule in the creation of the middle class society in Indonesia, as well as the thin layer of the high-class society. The existence of these parvenus would later give rise to a culture of consumption and snobbism. And it was from there that the art boom of the 1980s arose. Without the oil boom in the 1970s, there would be no painting boom in the 1980s. Dede Eri Supria, whose paintings always depict the industrialized and modernized big city with unique and beguiling touches of cynicism, once painted the oil industry with such a patriotic and even hyperbolic fervor. His Oil Drilling Series is a montage of the oil refinery images and the images of Indonesian heroic people and events such as Diponegoro, Budi Utomo, the Independence Proclamation, and the heroes of the Revolution. We would not be surprised, however, had we known his reasons. His solo exhibition at the Ismail Marzuki cultural park in 1986 was sponsored by PT Meta Epsi Drilling Company.


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Along with the torrents of foreign investments and consumption products, American music and Hollywood films also rushed in to Indonesia. The Old Order fell along with its ban on the “whining contra-revolutionary music”. The Western music that had been banned prior to 1965 was now made popular by the Army. The Army’s Strategic Commando held music concerts all over Indonesia. At the end of 1966, they even invited the Dutch popular band, The Blue Diamond, to play along with local artists such as Titiek Puspa, Bob Tutupoly, and Ernie Djohan. The concerts had several purposes: being a form of the Army’s tour-de-force, capturing the public sympathy, and demonstrating to foreign investors that Indonesia was not at odds with the Western culture. [12]

A similar thing happened in the Indonesian film world. Imported films had reigned long in Indonesia. In 1956, only 12.5 per cent of all the distributed films were locally produced. In the 1960s, along with the upsurging movement of “Break Down the Brits, Annihilate the Americans”, a Committee for Boycotting Imperialist Films from the United States (PAPFIAS) was established. Had it not been for its ideological leaning, I think all Indonesian film workers would accept two of the committee’s objectives, i.e. “the opening up of a new perspective in the development of national films” and “the protection of national capitals in the sectors of film imports and productions, through the boycott of American imperialist films that dominate the cinemas.” When the Old Order collapsed, imported American films flooded back again. The liberation of minds during the early years of the New Order also created a breakthrough that had never been repeated again so far. Through the initiative of the Minister of Information, BM Diah, and Umar Kayam, the Director-General of Film, Radio, and Television at the time, a National Film Production Board was established, funded by the obligatory fee of Rp250,000.00 received from every imported film, for the progress of the national film industry (this obligatory fee was often called “the SK71” fund, referring to the issued decree). The board—whose members once included thinkers like Asrul Sani—clearly put an emphasis on the quality approach. However, one could imagine how it ended in a regime that put the economy in the commanding position. The best work by Asrul Sani, Apa yang Kaucari, Palupi? (What Is It that You Seek, Palupi?), had been born from this initiative and successfully won the Golden Harvest award at the Asian Film Festival in 1970, but the producers could never pocket the revenues to match the fund of Rp33,690,000.00 (which was huge at that time) that had been used to make the film. The government then disbanded the Board. The SK71 fund was still effective, but the Board had been taken as failing to develop the domestic film industry. An article in the Kompas daily on March 26, 1973 (“Apa Lagi Sesudah Festival Film?”, or “After Film Festivals, What Next?”) said that the Board was failing as it produced quality films that did not sell well. Since that time, people were talking more and more about “the audience approach”. Asrul Sani himself criticized this approach even more strongly. In 1971, the Director of Films at the Ministry of Information, H. Djohardin, stated, “We should not sacrifice the preference of millions of people for the sake of the pseudo-intellectuals who think well of such unmarketable films as Apa yang Kaucari, Palupi?. I think our national film industry has developed well, the actors live better, and the employees, too…”[13] With that, the Indonesian film industry became full of people coming from the industrial backgrounds and there were increasingly fewer people coming from the film background—this situation went on for years, making the mainstream national films even more foolish and thus giving rise to opposing movements.


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The New Order finally collapsed under the weight of its own project. The decision makers in the regime never seemed to realize that modernization could not be accelerated, and the “take off” line probably never existed. When people from the center forced their “modern” thinking upon others, claiming that “the land is mere commodity” in order to inundate a village and turn it into a dam, thinking it was enough to give the villagers other plots of land farther away, it was obviously at odds with the “traditional” view of the villagers that believed that “the land is sacred”: therein lay the irreplaceable history of their ancestors. When these two viewpoints could not be compromised, guns often took over. And the modernization that is built upon guns can in no way be considered as modernization. Dissatisfactions were piling up due to the clash of the two points of view.

Yet another form of dissatisfaction arose among investors. The oil boom and the six to seven per cent economic growth made the state even stronger, and more arrogant as well. Several investors had removed their funds. Soon there were problems after the oil-based income had decreased. Mimicking Reaganomics, the deregulation policy took effect in 1982. While the role of the state lessened, that of the president’s family in Cendana grew. The aphorism of “l’état, c’est moi” shifted to become “the state is I, and my family, too”. The octopusian arms of the businesses owned by the Cendana children spread everywhere, one of them is to the televisions. With an intent that had nothing to do with the freedom of the press, the decade-long monopoly of the National Television of Indonesia, TVRI, ended when Siti Hardyanti Rukmana (aka Tutut, the eldest daughter of the president) founded PT Citra Televisi Pendidikan Indonesia (TPI), and Bambang Trihatmojo (one of the president’s sons) founded Rajawali Citra Televisi (RCTI) and Surya Citra Televisi (SCTV). Until the end of this year (2003), Bambang Trihatmojo’s Bimantara Group is still the strongest player in the television business in Indonesia. According to the Kompas daily on September 26, 2003, Bimantara would own 75 per cent of TPI’s shares by converting TPI’s debts into shares. Through the conversion of mandatory bonds, Bimantara would also represent 75 per cent of the shares in Global TV; while in Metro TV, they represented 25 per cent of the shares.

The emergence of private television stations triggered the rapid growth of the advertising industry as well as music videos and soap operas. Production houses mushroomed, and the true potentials of video cameras started to be realized. When the video technology entered Indonesia in the beginning of the 1980s, it was taken as mere consumption products like the refrigerator, air conditioning system, and perfume, instead of as a creative tool or a means of production. What was present in the market was usually the video player, not the video camera. The video technology was taken as providing a convenient way for people to enjoy watching movies, more cheaply and with more flexible time.

In the 1990s, the video camera started to show its social-political impact. The Santa Cruz Massacre (known in Indonesia as the Dili “Incident”) became big news as a video recording of the event was aired on television stations abroad. The review on the video recording which was published in the (now-defunct) magazine Jakarta-Jakarta in its November 1991 edition caused three of the magazine’s editors (Seno Gumira Ajidarma, Waskito Trisnoadi, and Usep Hermawan) to be “re-organized”. Five years later, the event on July 27, 1996, had shaken the New Order not merely because of the event itself, but also because of the illegally-circulated video recording of the event. It had been said that the Army also made use of the video recording to garner public sympathy. They visited Islamic schools and played the video recording, reminding those watching about the re-emergence of the “communist danger”. What happened, however, was exactly the opposite: sympathy flowed to the Democratic People’s Party, which the government blamed for the event. There are other instances in which the information technology have helped topple the New Order regime, and they have been much reviewed—I shall not repeat them.

At the end of the 1990s, the video technology became even more important due to the economic crisis. The price of the celluloid film skyrocketed. The video technology became the only choice for cineastes, especially after the technology enabled the video recording to be projected on to the wide screen.

Besides the video technology, another form of technology that played a significant role in the 1990s was obviously the computer. I do not know when computers exactly entered Indonesia, and for what industry, but from 1972 to 1975, the University of Indonesia was establishing Pusat Ilmu Komputer (Pusilkom) or the Center for Computer Science. In 1986, the Center launched the undergraduate program in the form of the Department of Computer, and in 1988 they opened the master’s degree program. It was during this period, between 1987 and 1988, as a boy in his final year of the elementary school, that I was introduced to computers. At the time, the Jawa Pos daily, in cooperation with a computer-education institution whose name I forgot (perhaps it was also the University of Indonesia’s Pusilkom), held a computer-based painting competition in Surabaya. I knew nothing about computers, but I loved to paint. On the first day, the participants were told in a workshop about how to use the computer, the mouse, and a program that was similar to the standard “Paint” program on Windows today. The instructors told us that one day these machines would change the way we paint and the way we work. On the second day, the competition began. While trying to remember the lessons I learnt the previous day, I started to make a standard painting: a mountain landscape. But I made mistakes upon mistakes and did not know how to delete them. Improvisations were necessary. The peaceful mountain landscape became a vicious mountain explosion. A week later, the Jawa Pos published the result. It was not bad: I was in the fourth place.

Nine years later, in Jakarta, I worked with computers again. While attending classes at the university, I worked part time in an NGO, and the job required me to be familiar with computers. In less than a year, there had already been many changes. Computers have become standard tools in offices, if only for typing. The mastery over programs such as MS Word and Excel became requisite for secretaries. Meanwhile, in editing rooms of production houses, in lay-out rooms of newspaper and magazines, in designers’ bureaus, computers were de rigueur. Graphic designers were much sought after, although computers had not been introduced to the class rooms. In terms of the equipments, the image appearance on the screen had improved much and seemed more “realistic”. Images were no longer pixelated, consisting of “flat squares”, but were already as sharp as photographs. Windows 95 was around with all its fanciness. Computers could be used to scan pictures, play games, listen to music, and watch films on the VCDs (Weezer’s and Eddie Brickell’s video clips the official samples that we got when we installed Windows 95). Its fancy quality, along with its ease, low cost, and piracy helped Windows-based computers to become more popular than Macintosh computers. I started to use computers to create visual works. My first print works exhibition at the CCF Salemba, Jakarta, displayed several computer-based print works that were, unfortunately, very similar to works of lithographs. This meant that the true potentials of the computer had not been explored.

In the 1990s, the computer was indeed used merely as a tool, not yet as a medium. People used it as an extension of brushes, paints, and other painting equipments, then printed the results on pieces of paper, and it was these pieces of paper that would later be exhibited (read: taken as works of art). People still said, “the size of my computer work is 15 x 20 cm”; they were yet to say “the size of my computer work is 1024 x 768 pixels”. The more interesting development took place in the realm of music. Under the influence of Prodigy, Atary Teenage Riot, and Everything But The Girl, several friends started to try creating electronic music. The computer was brought on stage, not as an accessory but as a medium.

As soon as the use of computer had spread in terms of quantity, in terms of quality its role also became increasingly important. Aside from all its socio-economical aspects, I think computer is all about this one, vital thing: it makes all the cultural data to be encoded in one universal language—the digital language. This takes place in the forms of online media and online libraries, electronic books, CD-ROM encyclopedia, the shift from analog to digital television, and the move from celluloid films to VCDs or DVDs. Each of the media’s viewing technique was very different one from the other (books were printed and read, films were screened in a dark room with the help of a projector, music cassettes were played using the tape and cassette player, video works were seen with the use of a video player and television screen), but they are now all coded in the binary language and can be read with just one tool: the computer. The video art in its contemporary form cannot exist without such uniformity of language.[14]


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The explanation above is probably rather long-winded, but it was not without a reason: I want to trace—quite thoroughly—the background of the emergence of video art in Indonesia along with the generation that creates it. This is because I think it is absurd and nonsensical if people keep on relating the development of video art in Indonesia with, say, Nam June Paik. When Paik created works to “attack television back”, Indonesia had only one television station, which went on air less than seven hours a day.[15] It is a lot more logical and down-to-earth to say that the emergence of video art in Indonesia had been triggered by software such as Adobe Photoshop or Premiere and the movie Trainspotting. Traces of Paik’s works are apparent only in the works of the two early pioneers of video art in Indonesia—Teguh Ostentrik and Krisna Murti. Paik often takes advantage of the gigantic effect of his video installations, aside from what appears on his television screens. The later generations rarely use such installation works. As is apparent in the OK. Video Festival, the works by these later artists are broadcast on one screen only; they are no longer placed on top of another, and they are neither repetitive nor “installative”, unlike the works by Paik, Ostentrik, or Krisna Murti. They explore more about what they want to say inside the work. Jim Supangkat once said that “the [video] art needs space”, so that Grace Santoso, a reporter from the daily Media Indonesia, who was interviewing him in relation to video art works, states in her article that “Without the presence of installation or any other spatial support, video broadcasts cannot be considered as video art.”[16] For the reason I shall later explain, I tend to reject such notion. Without any less respect for what Teguh Ostentrik and Krisna Murti had pioneered, I believe that the essence of video art is only achieved by the generations that come after them.

What I call ‘generation’ is slightly different from the cohort, which always has a political connotation. I view members of this generation based on the visual culture that surrounds them. Indeed, not all young people who were students in 1998 had similar political views, but they generally share similar visual experiences. In general, those who create video art works were born in the 1970s. They grew amid the tide of modernization. They experience the television, Hollywood films, and Western music as day to day aspects of reality—and these, therefore, are natural for them. They grew up amid the rapid progress of the information technology and the formal repression of the New Order. The stronger the repression was, the more intensive this generation takes advantage of the information technology to seek knowledge outside the frame of “what is good and correct”. I doubt whether Nam June Paik could actually inspire them if they only know of him from books. They, however, are familiar with all kinds of computer program and MTV and Quentin Tarantino. During the New Order, watching MTV was not a consumptive behavior, as it provided rebellion, insolence, and freedom of minds. I have directly observed that it has been these three things (the sophistication of computer technology, the variety in music videos, and non-mainstream films) that mostly influence members of this generation as they try to create their video art works.

This might indeed sound like generational chauvinism. However, it is a fact that those who still differentiate art from technology and criticize video art works as “simply not art works!” are coming from the older generations: those who see things happening outside themselves and can no longer follow, those who—to quote a friend—“read art history only as far as post-impressionism.”[17]

In 1983, Asrul Sani was astonished seeing computer-simulation studio which he visited in the United States. Today, I often find myself overwhelmed as I surf the internet or see how my colleagues make flash animation. Even for the generation who were born in the 1970s, what the computer can do is still amazing. But what about those who were born in the mid-1990s? They grew up with ten television channels plus cable televisions plus VCDs plus DVDs plus digital cameras plus web cam plus streaming media. They have been using the computer, surfing the Net, and chatting on cellular phones since elementary school. Everything what their previous generation took as miracles of technology is a part of the reality that they will take for granted. They are those who can recite: “Home is the heap of data”. If one day I tell them that there was a time when we had only one television channel that went on air only for seven hours a day, probably they would think that I am merely telling stories.

Naturally, just as the invention of cell phone did not instantly make people more polite in communicating with one another, the progress in the information technology does not immediately make people know more about reality or more aware about their surroundings. The effects of all these can still turn positively or negatively. Experts might discuss about this; I do not intend to make a judgment in this article—I merely wonder: how will their art take form in the future? Obviously, I am not going to criticize them if they no longer use paints.

Although I reject the historical link with Nam June Paik, I cannot, however, deny the link with the European film history. In any case, all the techniques used in video art today are film techniques. In terms of technology, we cannot avoid this history. The history of Indonesian film, on the other hand, did not mean a lot for the emergence of video art. The foolishness of the Indonesian cinema has given rise to a spirit of rebellion among idealist cineastes, but it did not turn them into video artists. Naturally, the most logical resistance against foolish films will be to make good films. When the narratives of Indonesian films dupe people, it is obviously futile to make anti-narrative works. This is why those coming from cinema background rarely create video art works; it is they who come from the art background who make video art works. The artists’ focus has indeed been on the visual perception instead of the narration.

The Pertamina case should actually make the art public realize that the tug-of-war with the economy will always happen. This is important not in terms of the narrow-minded notion of ‘the market taste’; rather, it is important because the artists should always be aware of the social and economic contexts in which they exist. Soedjoko was right: the program should be able to give rise to an interesting chronicle of how art is related to modernity as an ‘on-going program’ rather than ‘revolutionary ideals’.

Later on the New Art Movement would emerge, putting an emphasis on the importance of broadening the references for art. Pasaraya Dunia Fantasi was the first real linkage between the Indonesian art and the technology and industry. Several supporters of the Movement would also become the pioneers for what is known as ‘performance art’. Performance art actions were sometimes recorded on video, and the recording would then be broadcast as ‘video art’. Such understanding was obviously erroneous, but it was exactly at this point that the role of the video in art started to become palpable.

Other supporting factors were graphic designs. In general, the young artists from the generation of the 1970s have side jobs that require them to work with computers. Experiments with the magic box goes on to create ‘moving images’.[18] MTV provides samples of creative possibilities for the ‘moving images’. At the end of the 1990s, students of graphic design—due to the demands of the television industry—often created and tested audio-visual works. Design, films, and music were no longer separate. Roberto Rodriguez was as influential here as David Carson was. Visual artists make use of film techniques, while visual rules increasingly affect films (for example the typography in the films by David Fincher). Some of the artists I know today are involved in one way or another in the making of films—be it documentary, or in advertising or music videos.


To be continued to Part 2
Translated by Rani Elsanti